Had Myself a Merry Little Christmas

I left the door to the bedroom open Christmas Eve. I did it for a stupid reason, but I couldn’t help myself. It has to do with some of my earliest Christmas memories.

For years, when I was a child, my mother used to read the same story to my younger sister and me every Christmas eve. I don’t remember the name of the story, but in it all the animals were granted speech at midnight so they could praise the birth of the Christ child. My mother loved all animals, and loved this story. After she read it to us, she told us to listen carefully and we might be able to hear our family dog talking to Santa at midnight, or perhaps hear the squirrels and rabbits outside the house conversing. I always listened, and sometimes I fancied I could hear voices, though I never made out the words. Anyhow, there’s a little part of me that wonders in the back of my head if maybe the animals don’t really speak upon the midnight clear, and so I kept my door opened so I could hear Cattitude, O’Beast and Kitten if they decided to talk. No, I didn’t really believe they were going to talk. But I still hedged my bets.

Well, nobody had anything to say to me, but after I’d been in bed for about fifteen minutes Kitten came into the room and curled up in the bend of my legs. She’s done this before, but being Kitten her attention wanders and the next thing you know her feet are in motion, wandering after her attention. Christmas Eve she simply fell asleep next to me and stayed asleep until sometime after 4:00 am, when her nocturnal switch got thrown back into the “on” position by something and she abandoned me to my solitary slumbers. Having a quiet Kitten radiating heat next to me well into the wee hours of the morning was just as miraculous as hearing the cats discuss religion.

All good things come to an end though, and at quarter to seven the cat-alarm went off. Christmas morning kibbles were deposited into all appropriate food bowls, and I made myself a big mug of Darjeeling tea and settled in on the sofa with C.J. Cherry’s new book and the radio tuned to the oldies station, which was playing some of the good old holiday hits from the sixties. It just doesn’t get better than that.

I arrived at the Younger Sister’s shortly before noon. Like the Elder Sister, she’s definitely inherited my mother’s Christmas gene. Her house is decorated to within an inch of its life. The Elder Sister goes for the homey, folksy look, favoring handmade ornaments and evergreen garlands. The Younger Sister goes more for elegance. Her tree has white balls with gold trim, and clear glass balls with white or gold trim. She has crystal ornaments hanging from the windows and on the mantle, many from Waterford or Gorham.

Then there’s me. I guess I go for minimalist. A fiber optic tree, a wreath on the door, and lights on my ficus tree at work, and I have the look I was going for. Not only that, but I won’t be spending hours putting everything away January 2nd.

The Younger Sister is also quite a good cook. She’d never done a whole turkey before, but it came out perfectly. The Younger Sister told me as she was putting the turkey in the oven shortly after I arrived that she had gone to remove the giblet package from the cavity of the bird but there wasn’t one there. Neither of us considered it a great loss, since our family was never big on giblet gravy. The only ones who would have been disappointed would have been the cats, but they’d gotten their canned turkey dinner the night before so I wasn’t too disappointed that I wouldn’t have the giblets to cook up for them. As it turns out, the giblets weren’t forgotten, though. The younger sister didn’t realize that there are two cavities in the turkey, front and back. She did indeed check the back cavity thoroughly, but the giblets were in the front cavity, where they baked very nicely. Younger Sister was a bit grossed out when she discovered the packet while preparing to carve the bird, but it didn’t stop any of us from enjoying dinner.

Present giving was the usual extravaganza. I think I finally learned this year that there was no way I was ever going to keep up with those two, so I really didn’t try. The Elder Sister got a pair of slacks and pullover top from me, and a sapphire necklace, the stone cut in briolette style with matching drop earrings. Younger Sister got a troll house (circa 1960’s) with two trolls (circa ditto) and a three-diamond necklace. Ironically, the hit of the day seemed to be the troll house. I guess we never stop being little kids. Regardless of what we get for Christmas, toys are always best.

By the midafternoon the snow falling outside had turned everything white. There was a fairly brisk wind, and the snow swirled about the yard, making it feel like we were inside a snow globe. There had been freezing rain as well, so we didn’t stay very long into the evening. My fifteen-mile drive home was a bit challenging, but there were few others on the roads to complicate the trip. I do have very few nice things to say about SUV’s at the moment though. Once again, the worst drivers I saw during the slippery conditions were the ones cocooned in their great big road boats. At one point of my drive I was on a four-lane highway, with only the left lane cleared in both directions. Traffic was going about 25 mph, which was an intelligent speed for the given conditions. Without warning, a big red Dodge something-or-other blasted past us in the uncleared right lane. He must have been doing a minimum of 65. All the cars in the left lane got plastered from the splash from his tires, and for about five seconds I was driving blind while my windshield wipers valiantly attempted to remove the ten pounds of snow and ice that had been deposited on my windshield from this a$$wipe’s passage. When last I saw the moron, he was fishtailing around a right hand turn, and that’s when I saw he had three kids, none older than ten, in the back of his vehicle. Unconscionable.

I kept the bedroom door shut last night. As pleasant as sleeping Kittens are, I wanted no interruptions to my sleep of any kind. The cats had other ideas, however. Having once been allowed into the sleeping quarters after lights out, they now considered it not a privilege, but a right. Kitten, unfortunately, perfected a new attention getting trick that may well end up getting her killed and make me guilty of feline-cide. At the base of all the doors in our apartment is a doorstop, which is little more than a short rod with a plastic bumper on its end. The catch is that the rods aren’t solid, but instead coiled springs. Kitten has learned that she can reach under the door and pluck the spring. Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing. I was bound and determined to ignore it, since any form of reaction would only reinforce to her that she’d get attention if she played this game. I think tonight, however, I shall be stuffing a towel under the door where the spring is.